[ExI] Legal euthanasia for mental problems increasing worldwide

[spike at rainier66.com]

...> On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] Legal euthanasia for mental problems increasing worldwide

>...The remote Pacific island of Tikopia, as described in Jared Diamond's book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" (2005), provides a fascinating case study of a society that successfully managed its limited resources and survived for thousands of years. One of the most striking practices employed by the Tikopians was a form of population control called "virtual suicide," where individuals would voluntarily paddle out to sea, never to return, when the island's population grew too large to be sustainable.




Hi Kelly,

There are still indigenous groups living in Mexico such as the Huichols.  They have some limited contact with the Mexican people, but do not speak Spanish.  One group lives on a kind of mesa which can sustain around 600 to 800 humans.  The young sometimes leave and walk to a city somewhere, such as Mexico City.  Things usually go badly for them.  I can easily imagine they treat that as the equivalent of virtual suicide.

spike